A High Court of
Justice panel headed by Supreme Court President Asher Grunis issued a
conditional injunction on Tuesday preventing the state from paying benefit
packages to 54,000 ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.

The injunction
obligates the state to explain why the benefits were not suspended after the
Tal Law, which enabled the deferment of mandatory military service, expired in
August.

The state will also need to explain why the criteria for receiving
benefits packages were changed to include those who received them in the past,
as well as new yeshiva students.

The petitioners say
the state does not have the authority to continue paying these yeshiva
students’ subsidies until a new law is passed granting that authority. In the meantime, the
petitioners demand that the subsidies cease.

Other filed petitions,
which did not come before the court on Tuesday, have also demanded that haredim
who meet the age requirement be drafted.

The
injunction was given in a petition submitted by Hiddush - Freedom of Religion
in Israel, Israel Hofshit, The Israeli Forum for Citizens' Equal Rights and
Obligations, and former MK Roni Brizon.

The state will also have to explain why
it should not annul the September modification of criteria for financial
support of Torah institutions, and why the attorney general's recommendation to
modify the criteria should not be accepted.

In August,
the petitioners demanded that the state halt stipends to 54,000 yeshiva
students who can no longer postpone their military service since the Tal Law
ran out.

An analysis according
to religious affiliation reveals that the majority of secular and traditional
Jews believe haredim should be forced into "regular" service (58.5%
and 49%, respectively), religious Jews settle for any kind of service –
military or civil (50%), while haredim would exempt themselves from the duty
(62%).

Asked whether
politicians were exploiting the haredi draft issue in their election campaigns,
51% gave an affirmative answer while 41% gave a negative answer. All haredi
respondents, 81% of religious respondents, 60% of traditional respondents and
50% of secular respondents said they did not believe politicians' statements in
regards to this issue.

Rather than force
Arabs and haredim to enlist in the IDF or civilian service, they should be
encouraged to do so by increasing benefits for those who serve, according to
the Bayit Yehudi plan released on Tuesday to promote equality in the burden of
national service.

Ofer Shelah, the sixth
placed candidate on Yesh Atid’s electoral list, insisted on Wednesday that the
party’s proposals for drafting haredi men into national service constitute “a
red line” for joining a coalition government.

About 26% of those
eligible for army service in 2013 will not be drafted, according to the report.
Some 13.5% will be exempted for religious reasons, 4% for mental reasons, 2%
for health reasons, 3% due to criminal records and 3% reside abroad.

According to the IDF
Manpower Directorate, the numbers are expected to rise unless proper
legislation is enacted and haredi draft is approved by the government.

The
Central Elections Committee warned Habayit Hayehudi yesterday that the party
should not follow through on its plan to use the resources of state-funded
educational institutions such as yeshivas as part of an Election Day effort to
get as many of its prospective voters as possible out to the polls.

MK Yoel
Hasson (Kadima) and Labor candidate Yariv Oppenheimer Sunday asked the Central
Elections Committee to examine the actions of Habayit Hayehudi, following
publication of a report that the party’s activists are working to have
religious Zionist institutions and hesder yeshiva soldiers work for the party
on election day.

"I wish to warn
the voters of fraudulent solutions such as Naftali Bennett, who tells the
secular public (that he will support equal sharing of the burden) and then
whispers into the ears of the haredi rabbis that they should not worry and that
he is referring only to those people who do not study Torah," Lapid told a
press conference at Beit Sokolov in Tel Aviv Wednesday evening.

Every
former hesder yeshiva student is familiar with the ritual: A few days before
the election, one of "our" MKs arrives for a quiet chat with the boys
– not in the central beit midrash (study hall) but in one of the classrooms or
the dining hall.

Of course, this chat certainly doesn't come at the expense of
Torah study time but at the beginning of a break.

Bennett
dispelled concerns that his party would be under the sway of far-right rabbis
like Dov Lior, the chief rabbi of Hebron and Kiryat Arba, and Zalman Melamed,
who heads the Beit El yeshiva.

"The
merger agreement between Habayit Hayehudi and National Union expressly states
that all decisions will be made within the faction, not by rabbis," said
Bennett.

The Habayit Hayehudi leader said none of the
candidates on his ticket see themselves as subject to the authority of those
rabbis and that even Struck ignored Lior's suggestion that she not run for the
Knesset.

Over the past 20 years, the
ultra-Orthodox haredi political parties have attained considerable power by
forming “a swing block” – without which it has been impossible to form a
government.

They have utilized this power to
disproportionately leverage their control over religious life in Israel. The
religious establishment in Israel has become a tremendous source of jobs and
power for a small group of haredi political activists.

In practice, the Chief
Rabbinate has largely been taken over by anti-Zionist political forces who
attempt to dominate the entire Jewish society by radical standards that have
very little to do with halacha, but much to do with politics.

The effect of this development has been
catastrophic for the State of Israel and for the entire Jewish people.

"The bad feeling we had in our
hearts was confirmed by the Central Bureau of Statistics, which found that a
third of secular Israelis currently choose to marry abroad or in civil
ceremonies, anywhere but the rabbinate,” Stav said.

"We must fully
understand what these numbers mean," Rabbi Stav emphasized. "A large
number of Israelis are saying 'anything but the rabbinate' when it comes to
this once in a lifetime choice.

"This challenge
comes along with ever-growing number of Israelis who are no longer considered
Jewish according to official census numbers. In just a few generations we might
find ourselves as two nations – Jewish and unrecognized Jewish."

“The haredi world hasn’t
believed in the Chief Rabbinate since its founding anyway,” he says.

“What’s
happened over the past 20 years is that the haredi political functionaries
discovered the positions in the rabbinate. Some of them don’t go by the kashrut
certificates that they themselves issue and don’t accept the rabbinate’s
conversions.

They don’t accept its worldview or leadership. They have their own
Council of Torah Sages and family trees. They’re just taking advantage of the
jobs in the Chief Rabbinate, nothing more.”

Business
owners whose actions, either intentionally or through negligence, cause the
public monetary losses must bear personal responsibility for the damage and
reparations, said Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar in a precedent-setting
halakhic ruling ‏(edict based on Jewish law‏) issued Wednesday.

Attorney
Eliad Shraga, chairman of the Movement for Quality Government, said he hopes
the United Torah Judaism and Shas parties will heed the rabbi’s words and make
the right decisions about concentration and haircuts.

This is
precisely the classic case of Seed of Israel. His father is Jewish and his
mother is not Jewish. He needs conversion. It is necessary to take a lenient
and welcoming approach if the Rabbinical Court is convinced of the sincerity of
his intentions to join the Jewish people and to take upon himself Judaism and
its ordinances.

As for a Reform rabbi, any conversion that isn’t done by a
kosher rabbinical conversion court is not a conversion.

And this
especially applies to an Israel Defense Forces soldier who endangers his life
for the collective good of Israel. If he proves his great desire to join the
Jewish collective, he must be enabled to do this if he is prepared to undergo
the conversion process in all its elements.

It seems
that what really sparked the precious dears' outrage was the question the brown
groom asked his white bride: "What, you're not Jewish?"

This
question, this careful examination of the blonde's pedigree, was the straw that
broke the progressive camel's back. What would we say, the anointed ones cried,
if in any country - some of the real sticklers hinted grossly at Nazi Germany -
they would ask the woman, the bride, if she was Jewish or not? And the approved
response is, of course, Racism! Shame! Nazism! Disgusting!

But of
course, this is the essence of a religious wedding, the only kind permitted by
Israeli law, which permits marriage only between people of the same religion.

Didn't you, your parents and your children get married this way? Didn't you
check before the ceremony whether the other party was Jewish? If so, what was
wrong with the campaign ad?

Back when he was Israel’s
Minister of Justice, the irrepressible and ever-creative Yossi Beilin put
forward a proposal for secular conversion to Judaism. As he explained, “It is
simply unimaginable that in the 21st century, a time in which most of world
Jewry is not religious, we should continue to grant certain religious
establishments the right to define ‘who is a Jew.’”

Beilin’s argument was
straightforward: “Why is someone like me allowed to be an agnostic Jew while a
convert to Judaism is not? Why must a non-Jewish atheist or agnostic go to a
rabbi in order to become a Jewish atheist or agnostic?”

Yisrael Beytenu head
Avigdor Liberman: “Yet I couldn’t help but be angered by the campaign ad that
Shas made, which I personally call a horror movie that offended the dignity and
feelings of so many people, both in the immigrant community and among the
broader public in whose name they were offended,” he continued.

“Someone like you
knows that the Torah itself repeats 36 times the prohibition of offending
converts.”

Ostensibly,
Shas is a sectarian movement with the pretense of advancing the interests of
traditional and religiously observant Mizrahi Jews. But it is actually keeping
its voters in a ghetto and preventing them from moving toward an advanced and
integrative Israeliness.

Religious
freedom NGO Hiddush petitioned the Central Election Committee on Thursday to
stop Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef from giving sermons on Radio Kol
Barama, saying it is a form of illegal electioneering.

Shas co-chairman,
Interior Minister Eli Yishai, considered to be extremely close to Yosef, told
an ultra-Orthodox website on Sunday that the reason for the stroke was the fact
that, "the rabbi was anxious over the danger of yeshiva boys being
forcibly drafted."

Problems:
In a word − Shas. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef did not look kindly on the establishment
of this party. His people brought a great deal of pressure to bear on Amnon
Yitzhak to change his mind about running for the Knesset, but without luck. In
the meantime, Koah Lehashpia supporters are complaining about aggressive
tactics by Shas to deter activists and potential voters. .

On Monday,
the conflict came to a head when dozens of Shas supporters broke up an Amnon
Yitzhak rally in Beit Shemesh and even sprayed tear gas into the crowd.

Amsalem laments the loss of Sephardic
tradition as practicing a moderate Judaism, where people were able to ask all
manner of questions and where rabbis were equals who spoke to people at eye
level. He claims that it was hijacked in favor of something closer to what he
calls the “elitist” and extreme Litai [Lithuanian] branch of Ashkenazi haredim.

He also laments the fact that so many
rabbis who agree with him are keeping quiet for fear of losing their positions
or jobs. “They are under coercion from the religious [bloc.] They are too scared
to come out and say what they think.”

Amsalem also claims that he was
approached a number of times with all manner of bribes from high-ranking rabbis
and politicians. “They told me that if I left the political arena, it would be
worth my while, they would arrange a good job for me.”

Also Monday, Meretz
removed the image of 8-year-old Na’ama Margolis from their ads, after the
Central Election Committee received a complaint from her mother, Hadassah
Margolis, who did not know her daughter would be appearing in the campaign.

he Margolis family
became well known after haredi men harassed and spit on Na’ama on way to her
school in Bet Shemesh.

Am Shalem agreed to
remove a photo of Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef from its
advertisements, after the latter party complained to the committee.

According to Shas, Am
Shalem ads on the haredi news website Hadrei Haredim “humiliate and disrespect
our great rabbi.”

Am Shalem said it
would consult with the Central Election Committee should it plan to use Yosef’s
image again.

The fact
is that most Haredim want to escape the cycle of poverty and earn an honest and
comfortable living. Rabbi Amsellem can bring about the change from within.

With
understanding and sensitivity he will integrate Haredim into the army, communal
service and ultimately into Israeli society while allowing for a small sector
of an intellectual elite to serve their country through Torah study.

As a
result, the Haredi sector will produce jobs, create new start ups and pump
energy and resources into the economy, breathing new life and freeing up
resources for endless social welfare programs, education and health.

Director for Religious
Institutions at the Ministry of Education Amos Tzayada sent a letter to deans
and administrators of state-funded yeshivot on Sunday forbidding their students
from political campaigning during study hours.

“Studies must continue
as usual during the election period and students must be present at the
institute [of study] for all hours,” Tzayada said.

Livni
appointed Tal to head her party’s efforts to advance religious pluralism in
Israel and its campaign among “Anglos.”

That has
special meaning for Tal, who is a committed Masorti, or Conservative, Jew and
the gabbai (sexton) of the Masorti Shalhevet Hamaccabim synagogue in
Maccabim-Re’ut, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. His 17-year-old daughter was
recently harassed by police for wearing a tallit at the Western Wall.

“She got
a sad lesson on how religion works in this country,” Tal said. “I am concerned
about the extremism that has captured governmental institutions and
delegitimized us.”Tal said Livni shares his concerns. He said she
describes herself as a Masorti Jew and her sons attended the Masorti movement’s
Noam youth group.

If
elected, Tal hopes to organize the first egalitarian minyan in the Knesset
synagogue. He said he would give Livni the first aliya.

“I am
thrilled to be in a party led by someone who understands that Jewish tradition
can be manifested in more than just an Orthodox tradition and that there is
room for all expressions of religious affiliation in our country,” Tal said of
Livni.

“She had the opportunity to become prime minister, but she refused to
capitulate to ultra-Orthodox blackmail.”

Speaking at hi-tech
conference for the haredi sector, Rabbi Shai Piron, the No. 2 candidate on Yesh
Atid’s electoral list, said that ultra-Orthodox leaders have created an entire
generation of people within its community who are unable to support themselves.

Piron added that “it
is forbidden for a yeshiva be a ‘city of refuge,’” in order to allow people to
avoid participating in the work force.

A curious phenomenon
in recent Israeli elections has been the notable failure of the traditional
haredi parties to increase their representation in the Knesset over the past 15
years.

He also notes that the
growing numbers of haredim who are performing some kind of national service and
joining the workforce increasingly feel unrepresented by their politicians,
especially those from the Ashkenazi community whose natural party would be UTJ.

Another cause of the
disconnect between the political leadership and the haredi public is the lack
of primary elections for either UTJ or Shas.

"We will not sit in a government
that does not draft the haredim and doesn't integrate them into the
workforce," the former TV host said at a press conference in Tel Aviv,
where he attacked the largely religious Habayit Hayehudi party and its leader
Naftali Bennett for alleged double talk on the issue of the ultra-Orthodox
draft.

One flyer
bears the name "Euclid!" in large letters. The small print explains
that this Greek mathematician and his teachings might make their way into
Haredi classrooms, displacing the time the children spend studying Torah."

A government without a Jewish foundation will compel your son to study
outside subjects," states the flyer, part of the negative campaign
designed by the Breshit advertising agency. "You, and all of us, have to
protect the next generation."

I have no idea if the
stone-throwers from last week could be defined as haredim, but their behavior
proves that they do not act according to the laws of the Torah. The teenagers
acted they way they did despite the education they received, not because of it.

“Haredim are just as creative and imaginative,
and as willing to succeed, as are secular Israelis. In fact, from what I have
seen among those in the high-tech world, they are even more ambitious,” Crombie
told The Times of Israel.

“The problem is that they don’t have role models to
show them how to navigate the business world and get to the point where they
can build their own businesses.”

Three of the sector's
four daily newspapers completely ignored the former Sephardic chief rabbi's
medical condition the day after his hospitalization, failing to report about
the stroke or call on the public to pray for Yosef's recovery.

Meny Schwartz, who
heads the ultra-Orthodox Kol Haredi radio station, says that many no longer
feel constrained to vote for Shas and UTJ.

"A large part
of the ultra-Orthodox population no longer vote for those parties, for a
variety of reasons," he told AFP.

"Some believe
it is forbidden to vote for anti-Zionist reasons; others who are disappointed
by the leadership of the ultra-Orthodox parties, no longer vote, or vote for
parties like Likud or parties further to the right," he said.

MK Chaim
Amsellem, an Orthodox rabbi who is breaking away from the Sephardi
ultra-Orthodox Shas party to run as leader of the new party Am Shalem, is
showing himself to be among the Knesset's liberals when it comes to civil
marriage, though he backtracked on Sunday on support for gay marriage as well.

El Al Airlines' Senior
Rabbi, Yochanan Hayout, is suspected of indecent assault of an employee at the
Ben Gurion Airport, Ynet learned Monday. Hayout was questioned by the police,
which recommended that he be indicted.

The “race to the
courthouse” in the context of divorce proceedings is wrecking people’s lives,
Kochav Avital Shahar recently told The Jerusalem Post, sharing her
personal story with the public for the first time.

The “race,” as Shahar
describes it, has to do with whether a couple’s divorce proceedings get heard
by the rabbinical courts, the family courts or a combination of the two.

Director-General Atara
Kenigsberg of the [Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women at
Bar Ilan University] said that too many cases start in the rabbinical courts,
whereas the family courts could easily take on more cases and are not being
optimally used.

In June 2010, a commission
was formed by Justice Minister Yaakov Ne’eman, which initially appeared ready
to endorse a change in the balance of power between the court regarding
divorce: All issues would go to family courts automatically, except for getting
the divorce decree itself. … But various political pressures were brought to
bear on Ne’eman and the proposal, at least for the time being, was tabled.

The Women of the Wall are also extremists.
They have a gender agenda, not all of which I (an Orthodox Jew) find palatable.
But, again, even extremists have rights. I cannot in all conscience understand
why wearing a prayer-shawl should amount to a crime. If Anat Hoffman and her
colleagues wish to don tallitot and tefillin, then that is surely their
business.

The arrest of Feiglin for praying and
of Hoffman for wearing were gross violations of freedom of worship. Prime
Minister Netanyahu has asked Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky to find a
solution for non-Orthodox women's groups wishing to pray peacefully at the
Wall.

He should also be asked to investigate the prohibition on Orthodox men
wishing to pray peacefully on the Temple Mount.

More mainstream Orthodox rabbis say
the Chief Rabbinate has become more religiously extreme in recent years and
that its stand on abortion does not reflect traditional Jewish beliefs.

“There are enough situations in
which women are in terrible kinds of distress or there is something badly wrong
with the fetus,” Rabbi Benny Lau, a popular mainstream Orthodox rabbi, told the
newspaper Haaretz. “The slogan ‘Abortion is murder’ is neither
rabbinical law nor Judaism.”

Lau added that “taking our Torah in
the direction of Christian Catholic canon law is a terrible mistake.”

The Falash Mura,
descendants of the Beta Israeli – many of whom were forced to convert to
Christianity in the 18th and 19th centuries – have observed a unique
interpretation of Judaism for generations.

Practices include
separating menstruating women from men and burying their dead in Christian
cemeteries. They must learn Rabbinic law and Hebrew before moving to Israel.

In skullcaps and
draped in prayer scarves, they gather every week in Gondar's makeshift
synagogue, a corrugated iron shed painted the blue and white of Israel's flag,
chanting verses from the Torah in Ethiopia's Amharic language.

“Our
support for the return of the Bnei Menashe is based on God’s promises to Israel
to ‘bring your descendants from the east’, as we read in Isaiah 43:5”, said Dr.
Juergen Buehler, the ICEJ Executive Director. “We are thrilled to partner with
Shavei Israel in making this dream come true for these precious sons and
daughters of Zion.”

The Israel
Fellows program is something Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky has
championed as an integral piece of his larger vision of bolstering Jewish
identity among young Diaspora Jews. Since he became chairman in 2009, the
number of Israel Fellows has increased from 19 to 56 on 70 North American
campuses.

Today, the
benchmark is higher. “Nowadays, our goal is not only for them to say ‘I had a
life-changing experience’ but ‘I had a life-changing experience − and here’s
why,’” says Dr. Zohar Raviv, the international vice president for education at
Birthright.

“We want them to be able to articulate what they went through on
the trip. We want them to go back home better-informed and more-knowledgeable
Jews.”

There are
no statistics on how many of the more than 300,000 Birthright alumni have
immigrated to Israel following their trips, though experts say the percentage
is small.

“The goal of Birthright was not to promote
aliyah,” says Prof. Leonard Saxe, director of the Cohen Center for Modern
Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. “In the modern era, the key issue was to
create connections between Diaspora Jewry and Israel.”

Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state
is also bound up with its ability to address the views of Jews worldwide. When
many Jews look at the Kotel policies, they see a refutation of our most basic
principles, such as gender equality and religious pluralism. Entrenching the
current Israeli rabbinate’s power structure will only serve to further isolate
Israel in the global Jewish community.

Israel will achieve its mission when
Jews across the globe can say: This is a place which represents my values. This
is my home. Let’s make it our home.